5 Crazy Moments in Olympic Cycling History

The 1936 Olympic games were pretty crazy to begin with. Held in Berlin against the backdrop of an ever-intensifying Nazi regime, they very nearly didn’t happen due to proposed boycotts by the US and countries all over Europe. But despite ubiquitous swastikas, anti-Semitism, and racist propaganda, Hitler managed to temporarily downplay his extremist agenda long enough to secure protesting nations' involvement.

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In the 100km road race (the men’s 100km road race—women still weren’t in Olympic cycling yet), first place came down to a neck-and-neck finish between two French cyclists, Guy Lapebie and Robert Charpentier. Charpentier passed Lapebie in the last 100m and edged him out by .02 seconds for the gold medal. But here’s what else was unique about this particular Olympics, aside from all the Nazi regalia: It was the first Olympic Games to be filmed for a documentary feature. Acclaimed director Leni Riefenstahl, best known for the Hitler propaganda piece Triumph of the Will, filmed the 1936 Games for a feature called Olympia.

When the feature was released in France, Lapebie was able to watch his finish in a theater—and what he saw gave him reason to believe he had been robbed of gold. It was likely the first incidence of something like instant replay, though the “instant” part is laughable. There, on the big screen, he saw Charpentier tug his shorts backward right before pulling ahead at the finish line. Charpentier, of course, denied it—and youtube reviewings prove inconclusive as to what happened between the two French teammates at the end of that race. But Lapebie remained forever certain.

“From the day I saw that film, I considered myself the moral victor of the Olympic Games,” Lapebie said.

Maybe Don't Start a 10-Hour Race in the Middle of the Night—1912 Road Cycling in Stockholm

After Stockholm, planners decided to scrap the city’s velodrome to build an Olympic stadium, the world’s best racers began to fear cycling would be nixed from the 1912 Games altogether. And it very nearly was—without a velodrome, track cycling was obviously out, but Swedish Olympic Authorities wanted to cancel the road event as well, arguing that the roads weren’t in appropriate condition. Needless to say, this didn’t go over so well internationally and several countries began to protest.

Eventually the Swedish organizers gave in and decided to hold a 315km time trial race on a sketchy route they used for the Malaren Rundt annual road race around Lake Malaren. But the problem—other than the race being 195 miles long—was the start time: The staggered-start time-trial event began at 2 am. And it was more than 10 hours long. On roads already deemed dangerous. In the dark. Luckily there were only two major crashes but both were pretty serious: a Swedish cyclist who was hit by a car and dragged some distance, and a Russian cyclist who fell into a ditch and was later discovered there, unconscious, by a farmer.

Unprecedented US Dominance (And a New Form of Doping)—1984 Cycling in Los Angeles

Doping scandals have been a thing in competitive cycling since the early days of chasing cocaine with strychnine. But it wasn’t until after the 1960 Games—when Danish cyclist Knud Jensen collapsed and died during the team time trial road race due to amphetamines—that the International Olympic Committee considered cracking down. By the 1984 Games, dopers had discovered new, modern methods of amping up performance through as-yet-banned blood transfusions. Blood transfusions? It wasn’t illegal. How could it be wrong?

Once competition started, Team USA came out strong—almost suspiciously strong. After 72 years without an Olympic cycling medal, the Americans destroyed the cycling field in Los Angeles with nine medals. Then team pursuit silver medal winner Pat McDonough confessed that he and at least a third of the team had received blood transfusions before competition. By 1985, the IOC decided to ban the practice of blood doping, though they still had no way of testing for it and it wasn’t technically illegal until 1986. But unlike today’s doping busts, those 1984 medals were never revoked so if you look back at US Olympic cycling history without the backstory, it just appears that 1984 was a particularly strong year.

The First Try is the Charm—1952 Tandem Racing in Helsinki

How many people can say they won an Olympic gold medal the very first time they tried a sport? That’s the story of Australian pros Lionel Cox and Russell Mockridge, who had never actually ridden a tandem bicycle before they raced to victory in the 2000m tandem division at the 1952 Helsinki Games. Anyone’s who’s ever ridden a tandem bicycle with a new partner knows what an incredible feat of coordination and communication this had to have been. The two cyclists, already competing in individual events, found the bike discarded in an Olympic Village storeroom by the English team and apparently decided, “hey, why not?” That wasn’t their only medal-winning accomplishment at the ’52 Games—Cox won silver in the sprint scratch race and Mockridge won gold in the 1000m time trial. But those were events they’d actually practiced a few thousand times before. Not a previously unattempted team sport.

"Blokes who've trained on tandems for years wouldn't have done what we did," Cox later said, according to his 2010 obituary. "But we gave it a go. We had one kick and a ride, and we jelled."

The Showdown After the Showdown—2008 Mountain Biking in Beijing

And now for a tale from modern-day legend to prove that Olympic cycling remains as weird (and awesome) as ever. At the 2008 Games in Beijing, Canadian mountain biker and multiple Olympian Geoff Kabush rode to a 20th place finish in the men’s cross-country. At the closing ceremony, Kabush ran into Chinese basketball star Yao Ming, and from there things rapidly devolved into out-sized competition of a completely different sort. Not many people would challenge a 7’6” 300-plus-pound athlete to a drinking competition, but Kabush seemed pretty happy to go there. Check out the video of the action below and read this description of the events from Kabush's 2008 diary on cyclingnews.

On one of the early beer shuttles I offered a Tsing Tao to Yao Ming and he gave me some line like "I don't drink, but that is best beer"; yeah right. So a little later he is a little blown out and sitting down with his team and I have another box full of beers.

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